since we are talking about bateries, any body know how many cycles the powerbook batery has, cycle= loosing and recharging until it hits 100%, is it a couple thousand, or hundred before it starts loosing power?

OK I have had my powbook for a little over 3 weeks and I did the drain the battery and then charge it thing. But when I let it charge it never goes to 100% it always stays at 99% is this normal?

Yes, this is normal.

This is what I found on the Apple site…

PowerBook G4, iBook battery does not show a full charge in Mac OS X

Some PowerBook G4 and iBook computers may not show the battery as 100 percent charged in Mac OS X, even when the power adapter is plugged in. The battery appears to stop charging between 95 percent and 99 percent.

This is normal. The batteries used in these computers are designed to avoid short discharge/charge cycles in order to prolong the overall life of the battery. Because of this, when setting the Mac OS X battery status menu bar icon to display charge state by percentage, you may notice that the reported charge stays between 95 percent and 99 percent. When the battery level eventually drops below 95 percent, it will charge all the way to 100 percent.